The Smile of Choying Drolma
　

Cheng Gongliang

Half a year ago, Cheng Zhiyi, who was a student at the Department of Musicology of Shanghai Conservatory of Music, called on me at my home. She just returned from a trip to Nepal to visit a Nagi Monastery there, and to meet the excellent singer of Tibetan Buddhist songs, Ani Choying Drolma. She wanted to organize a concert for Choying Drolma and me – “Concert of Mantra and Guqin”. I didn’t know much about Choying Drolma, while the difference between her singing and my guqin playing is quite huge in terms of type of music form and style. Can we hold a “dialogue”, and collaborate to give this concert together?

I asked someone to get me copies of all 11 CDs published by Choying Drolma since 1997 and these CDs had been the music I listened to most often over the last six months. I also started searching online for any info related to her, including her signing, video, and articles about her background.

Therefore, I got used to the music of Choying Drolma, and memorized the smile of Choying Drolma.

On September 23rd, I came to my alma mater Shanghai Conservatory of Music. Choying Drolma also arrived in Shanghai that same day. We would meet soon. While waiting, I got a bit reserved and serious, as well as a little excited, after all I had been listening to her music almost everyday for the last six months.

Here she comes! Choying Drolma appeared gracefully in Tibetan Buddhist robe. I have finally met this totally new yet very familiar face. After just a few words between us, my reservation and seriousness immediately dissipated because I saw the smile on her face as she spoke, the smile of Choying Drolma sitting right in front of me! She said she didn’t have any professional study or training and asked me to please look after her during our performance.

The singing of Choying Drolma is full of compassionate feelings of Buddhism. On an artistic level, her singing differs from others in that she mainly sings from mezzo soprano or lower area, with outstanding musical sensibility. The softness and delicacy of her rhyme and rhythm, the free and sonorous release and subtle restraint in her singing, and her various singing skills including pitch accuracy, religious and personal singing style, are all first rate, and without any fault, no matter from which angle for one to look at! Someone once said her voice “is like the sky of Tibet, clear, serene and solemn, the blueness can almost steep into one’s soul. Her chanting is like whispering in low voice, exudes an incredibly calming energy just like Buddhist statues……soothing all those sorrowful pains and disturbed souls……”

She certainly “didn’t have any professional study or training” but she is actually the artist who produced this particular way of singing art.

“Today, they are here, to make us feel the power and compassion of voices.” ---The emcee Cheng Zhiyi told the audience at the concert.

The performance began. She started with her solo singing of five pieces including Padmakara and Chendren. Then it’s my turn of guqin solo of three pieces which are Missing an Old Friend, The Eight Movement of Pao-Xiu-Luo-Lan: Water, and Melody of Contemplation. Finally it’s the “Improvisation of Ganesh Stuti and Guqin” very much the focal point of those close to a thousand people in the audience at the concert hall.

My guqin improvisation corresponded with Choying Drolma’s Great Compassion Mantra Verses and Time……my “music dialogue” with her was not using guqin as an accompaniment, but rather my guqin improvisation and her singing tune had formed a relationship of two melodic voices in a “counterpoint”. When her warm and compassionate singing rose up from the bottom of her heart, the soft tunes of guqin glided on the surface of guqin through the movement of my fingers, its melody responding to her through the delicate fingering of “yin, nao, chuo, zhu”.

After the piece was over, Choying Drolma turned towards me amid enthusiastic applause from the audience, with her calm and peaceful smile, we bowed towards each other with our hands folded in front. Then she put her palms together and acknowledged the audience repeatedly. After facing the audience sitting in the center rows, she also turned her face up to the left and right, to acknowledge audience sitting upstairs on both sides. Under the shining stage lighting, I saw different angles of her smile. It was really just so beautiful.

I was totally awed by this powerful energy of religion and art. At the same time I was also deeply moved by her pure and compassionate voice, sunshine-like smile and warmth, so were the hundreds of people in the audience at the concert hall of Shanghai Conservatory of Music……

Early October to early November, 2011
At home in Nanjing College of Arts